Back in 1955, when Bill Haley And His Comets were hitting their stride and “jet set” referred to people who actually flew places, General Motors introduced the Chevrolet small block V8 engine. A marvel of compact design, technical innovation and (relative) fuel efficiency, it didn’t take long for the potent powerplant to end up in everything from milk trucks to race cars.

The little engine that could was heralded with the usual corporate fanfare, but few expected it to be the unmitigated success it became. It transformed Chevrolet, helped drive America’s love affair with performance and became ...

A federal judge backed the music storage-locker business model Monday while ruling that companies may develop services that store their customers’ songs in the cloud.

The closely watched case brought by EMI against MP3tunes comes as Amazon and Google recently launched similar services without the music labels’ consent. Apple is expected to launch a cloud-storage service with the labels’ blessing perhaps as early as next month.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley III said the MP3tunes service was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

“If enabling a party to download infringing ...